Skullgirl, Interrupted (Preview)
by Draenog Glas
Summary: Filia wakes up in a cold, icy hospital with nurses who find it strange that she attempted suicide on her medication, forgetting everything about her family and her life. She decides to enter an anti-psychiatry hospital called Hellinger Hall to help with her illness, a place that allows patients to go as mad as they want. A preview of this NaNo novel that will be completed in Dec.
1. I

**A/N: I will be posting the chapters I completed before I decided to quit NaNoWriMo (I just think I couldn't make a good novel in two months), but this still counts as a preview as the story is only about 23,000 words and I'm still thinking of completing it once I'm done with Fragile Angels and The Sun's Gone Dim (Sonic fanfics).**

**They are unedited so errors are bound to happen, and completely disorganized. However, I would rather show people what I had before I set out to clean up the entire story. Seems unfair to only show them previews of two chapters and not show them the rest when I'm thinking of not working on this story for a while.**

I am a black, undulating wave. I reach for the shore, yet it seems to be so far away, away from my salvation, from my black fringed hands, from my red eyes that see the sky so ready to swallow me whole, back into the ocean I go, without any remorse for the forgotten peace I once had, and I feel tired, oh so tired to reach this shore, until I truly know if I belong on the land, or I have to live in the throngs of the black sea, forever icy, forever frozen on my black fingers.

I am inside the sea, my voice bubbling a scream, but I cannot reach for the surface. I am trapped here, clawed by the many needles of the ocean, and I am trying to remember who I was before this accident, before this unconsciousness had taken over me and had changed my life radically, forever.

She was in the basement when she swallowed all these pills…

She was trapped here, until someone called 911, someone who found her…

It couldn't have been her son, Nikolas…

He is much too young…

I hear voices above me, above the surface. I hear them whispering about me. I don't know how they wheedled their way into my life. They tell me I am very sick, I was about to die, but as my eyes careen towards the frosty lights, my red scarlet eyes that were redder by lack of sleep, the hold of insomnia, I wonder if I truly was alive, or I would soon be deader than I already was.

Life was a very sickening ordeal. I didn't want to feel anything anymore, but yet I began to rise to the surface, like a whale in need of air after spending so many hours in the sea. To see the world that claimed to have missed me.

But they were sick too. Their faces were rotten and old, as rotten and as old as me.

The sea was nice. I would like to go back down there again someday.

I had forgotten how nice the sea was. I caught a trace of a memory, a green beryl sea staring out at me as I wanted to walk towards the surface of the sun, but that was all I remembered, as the seagulls surrounded me, eating the remains of the humans' waste. I couldn't remember who they were talking about when they said "Nikolas", but apparently, he was my son, a son I barely remembered I had. I felt as if I had nothing inside my womb, nothing that wasn't torturous, a snake crawling like an umbilical cord to wrap around me. To wrap around my neck, to choke me, choke me until I drown in that emerald sea, again.

"Filia, are you okay? Filia?"

The voice was faint, a small melody in the glare of the white light. My lids were very sore, very tired. I felt like I slept for three entire days and haven't woken up at all since then.

A man, I could see, with a clipboard on one hand and a pen in the other, was asking me how I felt. I told him I didn't feel anything, but defeat and despair. I felt cold, I felt alone. I felt as if I was the only woman in a planet full of men who wished for me to be alive when I already felt dead inside my cold heart. It had ceased beating, or was beating painfully slow, painfully slow. It uttered slowly, it called out for the world to avenge it, as it once was bright, once was a quiet, shining star, but I had killed it, I had killed my only friend in the world, the heart, and now it was black and obtuse and bleeding with rot.

He wrote all this down. Secretive information that I wanted to keep away from these men. I could see some women in the halls of the building, but their faces were so pale, like circus clowns, and their nails, so bloody red, their crosses so tall and defiant, ready to crucify me. I wondered if they knew me, or even cared, but I could feel myself pulling away from the shore again, back into the black sea, awaiting the love of the Sea Christ, the love of the dead and pale God…

—

I woke to the sound of a nurse climbing in the door with her red garnet heels, her lips so frosty and a pale, icy pink. She told me to look at myself, to see what I had done to myself since I swallowed my anti-depressants.

I don't remember this. I don't remember me being prescribed with medicine for people who couldn't see the silver lining in anything, and as I looked in the silver mirror I had a bruise on one of my eyes, my skin like yellow tallow, and the nurses swore I had eaten nothing but coffee in days, and what seemed to be some paper take home cups of milkshakes from a burger joint I went to often. I had eaten nothing in days. And they couldn't find out why, and I even didn't know, didn't remember anything from this so-called "suicide attempt". I still felt tired, exhausted from finding all of this information, the doctors swarming in to see me, trying to tell me that this son I had, named Nikolas, would be taken away to a foster home. But I couldn't remember having a son. I couldn't remember anyone in my life named Nikolas. I told him to bring him in, to see if I could memorize his face, his features that would stick out to me like needles as the nurses continued to inject me with insulin, my legs so swollen, my bottom sore and large.

"Mommy…Mommy why did you do this? Why did you want to hurt yourself?"

I could see tears in his red eyes, his black hair that looked like mine was thinned out, but yet as I gazed up at him, I asked him if he was my son, because I couldn't at all reminisce on the day I had a child. My son had the exact same eyes, the exact same hair, yet I felt he wasn't mine, that he was just nothing but Zeus' creation, my head split open to reveal so many children, children that were all supposed to serve a great purpose in the world. I might as well had been a titan, eating all the gods until they were forced to puke them out, my son Nikolas being one of them.

The gods, they were so hated for their loathable acts, but I wonder if in my sudden death I had become one of the titans, and Nikolas was the result of me eating the other gods in the world, including God Himself.

The meat loaf they gave me in the hospital was so cold, still partially frozen, that I asked them if they could give me a cheeseburger, but they told me it would be unhealthy, that I would go back to being as overweight as I was when I last saw my doctor. The "son" continued to look up in my sleep-deprived eyes, and he asked me if I couldn't remember anything at all about him, and "why did you take all those pills?"

"I don't know," I said quietly, my lips feeling as frozen as the nurses', as frozen as the night sky as the sun soon left it.

"Mommy, you have to remember…"

I wouldn't touch the meat loaf. It reminded me of cold unborn infants. And I refused to eat it.

"Mommy, you have to eat too…"

"Only if they give me a milkshake and a cheeseburger and fries," I told him. I would've smiled, but my lips felt a ring of barbwire around them. And I still wasn't so sure that he was My Son.

The nurses sighed, exasperated, but they told me if it was the only thing I would eat, they would order it up, even if the hospital never had served burgers ever in its history. I told them it was better than the meat loaf, and the nurse frowned sharply, disgusted, when she took the silver tray away from me and looked back at The Son, the boy continuing to look at me with pitying eyes, the eyes of defeat that I once had, that his Mother had forgotten the world and how to eat properly and that she gave birth to this boy who looked so much like a monster, as I imagined his claws would trigger out and his teeth would become fangs, The Son that I knew was given to me by Satan.

"Mommy…you don't remember anything! They're going to take me away from you! Just like my dad, you're gone too! You're gone too…You're gone too…"

He was escorted away from me, the Maiden Who Had Forgotten Everything, and the words "You're gone too" continued to echo in my ears, like tinnitus screeching in my eardrum.

The nurse served a burger, a strawberry milkshake, and some potato cut fries. I ate them with great gusto, as if I hadn't eaten anything in years, and even if they weren't the best I had, I felt it was the best meal I had in that long sleep in the sea I once had slumbered. The nurse scowled, her teeth peeking from her pale lips, and I could hear her thinking that I was nothing but a pig-lady, and I would soon grow a snout and a spring tail.

As the days droned on, the sun being completely orange, the moon being completely yellow like my skin, I ate a little bit more each day as the nurses came and gave me small meals to get myself to eat regularly like a normal human being. I felt sick after I ate, but I never threw up and tried to keep the food inside me as if I was nothing more but a bag to the nurses that kept on devouring food in its plastic gullet, as the insulin treatments began to decrease little by little. I was sick of that needle in my ass, making me balloon up as if they were clowns making balloon animals for children. I was a puffer fish, and the needles continued to prick the nurses as they tried to take care of me, and I could only do nothing but say nothing, as the bruised face faded away like a scene in a dramatic movie, as my skin regained its pale white color than the yellow tint like the golden moon in the night sky, as I gazed out and saw how lovely the night was, and that I wasn't a part of this lonely life, the life where I raised a child without the aid of a husband, where I drove to my college and studied literature and poetry, but even I couldn't remember at all why I chose that study, why I fell out of this life with the swallowing of these yellow pills they gave me so I could wean myself off them. They said they weren't working. And I said, "Oh, really? I didn't know!"

Must've worked very well if I attempted suicide on them. The Food and Drug Administration warned us about the depressing side effects, yet I dived deep into those pills anyways, hoping they would erase the sanctity of the life I once held.

Priests came in. I told them I didn't believe in a God. If He was here, I wouldn't be here. They told me all about how I could repent this sin of self-mutilation and go to heaven. I said there wasn't a heaven, only hell.

They asked me why I believed that.

"Because humans can only suffer. They cannot have joyous times. They are born, and they are thrust upon them a life of suffering, a life that you can't stay as a child forever and soon grow into a teenager, then an adult like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon, but instead of wings, you get selfishness and worry. And soon you're an old person, trying to survive your withering skin, but soon you keel over and die, like a flower that rot in winter. Everyone dies in winter. No one dies in spring or summer, where life is born, where life is at its most brimming moment. Winter is where everything is sucked into the Earth, and you are cold and pale and dead. And I felt like it was my time to die, as it is December. Christmas is even more depressing, and so is New Year's, because you have to live yet another year of your suffering. And I can't stand living forever in heaven! I would rather suffer eternally in Hell!"

They were confused, officious in their Bibles and in their work to have these women who attempted suicide repent. I thought they were selfish. Women wanted to die because of men.

They left, as I was left in the dark shadows of the hospital room, with straps attached to my arms and legs, until it was about feeding time for the swine lady.

I lied in the crevices of the room, like a recluse spider, waiting for my chance to sink my fangs into anyone who dared tried to help me from my sinking depression, as the wave continued to try to reach the shore, the wave swallowing parts of the sea, then throwing it all up and gathering up more food, the bulimic ocean that wished to stay beautiful for all the world to see, even for her nonexistent God, and her nonexistent heaven, but the abusive moon continued to watch her, telling her to stay pretty, to stay pretty…

—

Another doctor in his magnificent white lab coat that he killed so many rabbits for came in, and he told me that they had decided for me to stay in a psychiatric ward and I told him that I already felt like I was already in one, that my hands were strained and I wasn't allowed to walk, I wasn't allowed to say anything or the nurses would look at me with malice, I wasn't allowed to eat what I wanted, and the doctor simply showed me his pink hand, his hand much like the bloody pink sun, and he laughed, heartily.

"Oh, we aren't going to put you in that kind of psychiatric ward. We've heard about this ward that was revolutionary for patients like you, and it was recommended by Dr. Avian, a man who is making a breakthrough in the psychiatry field for allowing his patients to do exactly what they wanted, and to not close the ward doors and to never dispense any medication. It would be the perfect place for you, Filia. How would you like to be in a hospital that you could leave at any time, you're allowed to go as insane as you want to be, and…"

"I'm not insane," I replied in a hollowed out, squeaking voice from a mouse inside my pale, frozen lips. "I never was…insane."

I wanted to turn over in my hospital blankets and ignore these crazy doctors. Putting me in a psychiatric ward, one where patients were never locked in, could do what they wanted, and was never allowed any antidepressants and antipsychotics…I was simply crazy for even listening t that suggestion, that this doctor was making rounds with his research, that he thought patients done so much better with his "anti-psychiatry" philosophy. I listened to the gentle beeping of the machine, the gentle rolling waves of sleep, and I told them that I didn't want to go, that I wanted to stay here, always trying to reach the shore, always trying to reach the threshold of this live that I used to live in, this mystery woman I used to be, before I was transformed into this dark and sacrilegious person, who never believed in any God or any heaven, but believed there was a demon on the floor, waiting for me to swallow more of the pills that once made me happy, to put me in an infinite cataclysmic sleep where I could never hear another doctor or another nurse whose lips were chapped by the freezing wind, and I watched the stars of the ceiling float away as I was pinioned into the bed, the straps becoming tighter around my wrists, and I thought I could laugh at their ridiculous suggestion, laugh as I heartily so desired, as I looked at that same silver mirror the pale fragile nurses gave me, my hair becoming a mass of black tendrils, as if I was Medusa, the Greek monster of impurity, the snakes withered around my neck ready to wrap around me until I was blue and could see the stars again on the gray, ashened ceiling.

The doctors talked it over, I could hear with the mice in their throats beginning to squeak and whisper. They thought about handing me prescriptions and sending me out on my merry way, where I could never remember the woman I used to be, with this son I couldn't memorize that I birthed out of my frozen womb. But the doctors said it was such a stupid suggestion, they should send me to a psychiatric ward, one equipped to deal with depressed patients, one with mass hysteria striking their faces as I continued to choke with laughter, as the tendrils began to stream from the bed, speaking, speaking…

"I truly think this anti-psychiatry method could work," one fool said. "We're not allowing her to feel what it was like to be a child again. A lot of other patients have been doing so well in that hospital, never ushering any violence or depressive acts, just…being themselves, diving into their craziness, letting them go as mad as they want to be until they're all tuckered out and they realize that life should never have any restraints. Look at her! Look at society! She is weakened by the chains of society! You denied her to have another cheeseburger and fries and a shake! But here in Hellinger Hall, she can have whatever she wants, she can be whatever she desires to be! She may even regain her memories if we send her there, if she remembers how teachers had always appreciated her creativity and her spontaneity. I truly don't think any of my patients are ill. They are simply relying on their instincts to defend themselves from this poor quality of life. And that's why Ms. Filia here had attempted suicide. Because she doesn't like what society is offering her!"

Was that it?

Was that the reason why I attempted suicide?

Because I wasn't ill, but I hated the throes of society, that the world never gave me a chance to be who I really wanted to be?

Children often said they wanted to be an astronaut, or a scientist, or an artist, but never had I ever heard any child in my fragmented memories, say they wanted to be a crazy man or woman, screaming until the night grew dark and dusky, playing and toying in their fantasies that no one had ever told them that what they believed in wasn't right, but "insane" or "mentally unstable", and they were never given the medicine that could quiet their demons, the devils that I only believed in, that all the angels in the world were dead and had been sucked dry of the Earth.

But the doctor's suggestion was so convincing. Even if I was so sad, so lonely as the arc of the moon shone on my face in those dark contours of the room, I wanted to regain my memories back. I actually wanted to know how I had received this Son in my life, The Son named Nikolas as he continued to cry in his pitch-high throat, and I wanted to know why exactly I had attempted suicide, other than I knew that I was depressed, that I wanted to swim in that ocean near Little Innsmouth, wanted to be taken in by the waves, drifting in like beechwood from a forgotten tree until I was hit by the sun's rays, and I could gaze at it, until my eyes were broken and discarded like shattered glass.

I was a woman that I wanted to discover, a woman who gave me this plain, strange life of being in a hospital, one where all the women could do anything they pleased and were never locked in. This Dr. Avian continued to talk about it, as if it was the greatest discovery that mankind had ever achieved, and I still wished I could sleep, as I needed to catch up, the droning of the day seeming too old and odious for me to want to continue staying up, the crevices in my eyes beginning to seep of pink.

It was either this hospital that I could leave any time I wanted, with very little restraints and no medication dispensed like candy, or a hospital that did all that, and I could possibly be locked inside it, for many years. A hospital where I could be lying in this army cot, with straps locking in my hands and feet, as if I was some kind of monster that could destroy this city, the Medusa Who Forgot All the Forged Heroes, all the heroes who once slain her with their fiery swords, and my head had recovered, growing yet another scaly body, yet more snakes growing like vines near my neck and throat…

Maybe I truly was a monster in my past life. Maybe I had abused this Son, maybe I wanted to repent for my sins by killing myself. Maybe I could suggest for them to leave me be and I could finish the job with yet more of the anti-depressants. I would be alone, without The Son inside my home, the home I had entirely forgotten, that I didn't even know what it looked like.

Even if I was sent home, I would be traveling the pale, dead streets, looking for my pale, lonely home. I would never find it. I had forgotten the face of my house, my prosopagnosia overwhelming me and taking me back to the cold, dead, silent sea, the sea that I could barely remember, as it continued to stare back at me, as the serpents of my hair continued to drip, and I heard a voice beckoning, calling…

I had no choice. It was either a hospital that allowed everything, or a hospital that didn't allow anything. Anything at all.

And I said, "I would like to be taken to Hellinger Hall. I would like to allow this discourse in this anti-psychiatry method, and I want to regain my memory. I want to know why I hurt myself, why I have a son, why this supposed husband had left me."

And I heard a voice in the back of my head speak, with such a heavy, tobacco-stained strained voice, "I would like to go too. Take me to this Hellinger place you call a paradise on this side of Insanity City."

I asked if my doctors had heard anything, and they shook their heads, and said they haven't heard anything at all except my decision to go to this psychiatric ward.

They lifted the army cot into the ambulance, with the restraints completely removed from my hands and feet, and they told me good luck, and that they hoped I would regain my memories, and I would be happy in this hospital, known to the world as Hellinger Hall.

And I fell asleep as the hospital drove me there, listening to the singing my hair choked in, asking if the man who was watching me would give him a beer, as I floated away from the white walls, back into the black waves of the sea that beckoned me…


	2. II

Hellinger Hall was a warm, bright red, as red as firehouses, as red as fire itself. I lied on the army cot, with no restraints holding my arms and feet, and I heard singing, far away, from the back of my head, a voice that had the scent of nicotine and the breath of whiskey, the voice that continued to sing so many Stevie Ray Vaughn songs that I couldn't decide who was doing the singing in this lonesome ambulance, the paramedic or someone inside my head, someone who I barely remembered in my anti-depressant wracked head, a man who appeared as quickly in my life as soon as he disappeared, like a wisp of smoke, the silver air wrapping around me like snakes, inside the nostrils that were so offended by his stench, the stench that I remembered him by, little by little…

His name was Samson. I remembered as much as that.

He continued to sing the Bee Gees, the Beatles, anything that had a solid beat, with his face much like a crocodile, his teeth disarrayed and his hands and feet much like claws of hair, and I knew that this Samson didn't look like my hair, but I shrugged it off, as I shrugged off most things, even if it seemed to be that I was hallucinating, seeing visions that told me something about this man that I had forgotten, his fingers laced with arsenic, his hair as gold as pyrite…

I asked the paramedic if he had heard anything, and he said no, except me humming to a tune. He thought I was happy. Happy was the last thing I thought I would be.

This man…he was entirely black, as black as my hair. I couldn't remember his face. I just remembered his favorite songs we would sing together, the joints we would visit, and I wished he was back with me, but something made him leave, something made him come back as my perfect set of hair, as he continued to hum and hack and crack out a few tunes, his voice breaking free of the doctors that visited me to assess me, to tell me everything there was to do in Hellinger Hall, the place that smelled like cinnamon and the walls were as red as blood. I wondered if mental hospitals even needed to be red. Red was the color of violence. And they said the only thing they restrained were violent and suicidal patients.

"This is the dinner hall where you and all the other patients come to eat. Our nurse will supply you with some of the best home-cooked food you can find in any psychiatric ward."

I doubt it. I was sure it was the same as the meat loaf back in the hospital I was in, as cold and as frozen as a dead infant.

The hall was red, entirely red, and there was a long table, dusted off with white snowflake powder from Christmas. I was glad I didn't had to come here during the holidays, if I even had a family at all, except for The Son.

I could see the walls had a satin-stain of brown, as if someone had…

"They're allowed to do that, Filia. They're allowed to be as crazy as they want to be."

…smeared the wall with their feces…

And it smelled like shit too. The entire part of the patient ward smelled awful, and I could see some of the red paint beginning to peel and splinter off like shed skin. I wondered if all these patients were this crazy, as I could hear one gabbling to herself, speaking in tongues, speaking in a way that doctors couldn't understand but yet appreciated his sentimental insanity. She wore white robes, while talking to a few stuffed animals, saying that she was the prime minister of the world, and this was her tea party.

I saw a woman who wore a thin sweater vest, her arms entirely covered with scars, and she wore a cat tail and cat ears, as if she believed she was a cat herself.

"This is Ms. Fortune, Filia. She has been in here for about a year, trying to control her self-harming tendencies. The only thing we don't allow in this hospital Filia, is harming yourself or others. And Miss Fortune once drank pipe cleaner to kill herself with, and she was sent here as she didn't want to be in an oppressive hospital setting like the rest of them. Isn't that right Miss Fortune?"

She was picking a small can of tuna, her fingers full of pink greasy dolphin and fishes that sacrificed themselves to be fed to this cat, and she picked at it slowly, as if there were bones inside it, needles that threatened to prick her and dissolve her of her scars.

"Mew Nyan! This place is the cat's pajamas, Avian! And I won't drink pipe cleaner ever again, meow! It's not as delicious as tuna!"

I heard the back of my head, choking with the threads of my hair, whisper softly, "What a damn freak."

I wondered why she wanted to be as much as a cat than an actual human, but as I discussed this with Avian, he said he didn't see any cat features on her, only the scars she inflicted on herself with her long nails and some of the knives she stole from the kitchen. I asked him why she wanted to hurt herself, if there was anything that was hurting her at all, and he only shook his head and said it was private, confidential information. But I continued to hear her mewling, as she pricked the long nails free of the pink meat, and she ate it with great voraciousness, even when Avian had told everyone that it was about time for dinner.

I wondered if she hardly ate either, nothing except tuna and fish and cat nip.

I saw my next patient, named Cerebella, a dark-skinned woman wearing a hat that…moved, with great big orange muscles, with diamond insignias on his skin, and his tall, protruding horns on top of her head, the skull of a once very proud, very strong bull, and she said that she got this hat a long time ago from her boyfriend, and she named it Vice-Versa, but I could swear that I saw it move, that it picked things up for her, that it spoke to her, much like my hair was beginning to do, as he smoked a cigarette he found in the hallway, barely lit, and he began to smoke a long blue tail of tobacco, and he told me that he liked the girl, but she was nothing compared to me, his "host". Avian simply said that although Cerebella may not have had any serious mental illnesses since she came here, she had come because she was looking for a "lost part of herself". She was finding herself, in this dark, somewhat glowing hospital, and she thought her answers would lie in Hellinger Hall, with a man who had written several books about the revolutionary treatment of "anti-psychiatry". And although I told him that I thought her hat moved, he told me I was allowed to believe in it, and that I had a parasitic hair named Samson. I wasn't condemned for believing in my fantasies, but rather encouraged to dive deep into my supposed psychosis. Unlike the other hospital I was in, where they told me I was crazy, where they told me I was wrong for barely eating, for only drinking strawberry shakes and coffee every couple of days.

I once liked to eat. But something made me not want to do it anymore. I deprived myself of the food that I once enjoyed, of the meat I once ate gustaciously, of the burger joints I once visited many times, along with the coffee houses and the gas stations. I wondered what made me not eat, my skin that had that sickly yellow color that once dyed me into the surface of the bloody sun.

I heard screaming as Avian began to show more nooks of the Hall. I smelled the scent of shit and piss, and I could see a woman, with a needle pricking out of her finger, and with red velvet crosses inside her eyes along with indigo hair, she told Dr. Avian that the other patient, named "Painwheel" was still regressing to a child-like state, and she only checked her for the experiments they were conducting in the hospital, nothing more. No anti-psychotic medication, no restraints. They allowed her to smear the wall with her feces, to be fed with a bottle, to speak with babbles.

Her name was Painwheel. Only Painwheel. And the nurse was called Valentine. Only Valentine. And as I looked at the small girl with the blade attached to her back, with her face and mouth attached to a leather mask, her body so frail, so broken. She continued to paint the feces along with other colors of her acrylic paints, the nurse only doing nothing but smiling and nodding. And Avian also looked at her, and he smiled and said he will allow her to make her artwork, as after all, she could be the next great artist that will hit Little Innsmouth.

I wondered if these doctors were just as insane as the patients. That they believed that these patients' behavior was completely acceptable. Samson only sang to the radio that the nurse had on, a tune from Elton John, and I asked her, again, if she had heard anything, anything from my hair.

"Oh, nothing, sweetheart. But you're allowed to believe that. Nothing wrong with having a little bit of an imagination."

I simply sat and watched her as she wrote down Painwheel's behavior chart, and she continued to cook the food from the fridge, and she called out that dinner was going to be ready, any minute now, time to eat some tuna and some meat loaf and some candy and some spinach…

We went out into the main hall, where I could see a very young girl, wearing a purple dress, wearing a very tall, very '40s style cartoon-type hat, and she was watching some vivid virulent and violent cartoons, the animals beating each other with hammers and saws and guns and anvils. And she watched them, her eyes never taking themselves off from them, her eyes that looked as pitch black as a hole, her eyes that looked the same as those cartoons I had watched what seemed to be so long, when I was a child. I could remember the childish dreams and the childish memories, but not why I wanted to kill myself, why I wanted to have a son I could barely remember.

"And this…is Patricia. But she prefers to be called Peacock. She's often in the main room, watching her cartoons, smoking a cigar, just having a fun time reliving her childhood, even if she is only 13…"

"Can it, doc! I'm tryin' to watch what happens to Wily Willy!"

Her eyes never left the TV. She laughed whenever something was bleeding or burnt or shot to hell. I could see she had a small green bird with her, also wearing a dress, eating popcorn alongside with her. I asked him who was he, and why was he alive, speaking to this girl, and he said it was only her stuffed animal named Avery, who was supposedly her best friend. But even if he wished to know more about this woman named Peacock, she kept everything quiet, and she was here on account of "psychotic, violent behavior", but she decided to go here, as she couldn't imagine herself in a real mental hospital setting, and "takin' pills that are goin' to make you sick as if you were a real patient in a real hospital!"

I continued to stare at her, as she lit up yet another cigar with her gloved fingers, her arms that were metallic, full of red, evil eyes that I could only remember would belong to a peacock, those violent virulent violet eyes…

As Dr. Avian moved beyond the main hall, into a room with a nun who continued to pray silently to herself, praying to a god that never was there, I wondered why she was here in the first place, or if she was just part of the "religious and spiritual experience" that Hellinger Hall had promised me, telling me of a god that I couldn't believe in, because I was sick, I was too ill to believe in any god that could help me through this life I had worshiped, that I had swallowed the pills to lead me into some kind of spiritual hell no one else wanted to believe in, but as the nun continued to smile at me, her teeth so ghastly white, her hands bone thin and her eyes looking as swollen and as red as mine, I could see a creature lurking in the darkness of her room, a monster that had razor-saw teeth and a mouth that would devour much more than I ever had before I was sent back to this life, this life of confusion and fidelity, and the veins in its head, they were ready to burst over being hidden for so long, being caught in the nun's shadow for so long, and he screamed, he perched and cried and cut through the air, that he wanted to be seen, he wanted to be believed, he wanted to be the real her!

I asked him what was her name. And why she was here. The creature that hid in the silhouettes of the curtains, that danced in the golden moonlight as it rose over the sullen air and shined upon her madness…he said her name was only Double, and she once worked as a nun in a church, until they referred her here due to her "multiple personality problem."

He said nothing more, but yet something told me she was in here for much more than that, as the monster continued to slither around the room, speaking to her in Satanic tongues, and they told her that she was allowed to switch to this personality, as long as she didn't hurt anyone, hurt anyone at all…

I went back into the main hall, as Peacock continued to watch her Saturday morning cartoons, hoping she would be granted at least another half hour worth of violent salvation before they would show soap operas and "boring adult things that are stupid and tacky". She was on her last pack of cigars, but the doctors allowed her to go outside the hospital to purchase more, as Hellinger Hall's doors were never closed, but were always open to anyone who wished to get out, to leave or to buy something they wished to shove in their rooms. As I glanced at Peacock's room she had a lot of merchandise of various cartoons, especially of what she deemed her favorite cartoon, "Anne: Girl of the Stars" and her cigar swished a smoky trail as Samson continued to speak behind my head, talking to her, a voice that didn't belong to me but of a man I once met, a man that something told me I wished I had forgotten, long ago.

"Don't you watch anything that isn't total junk to your brain? Not like I'm any better, but maybe you should watch those talk shows, or you could watch…"

"Can it, hair brain! I don't watch any of that boring, old people stuff. I watch what I like the most, just absolutely junky cartoons, and I can eat all the popcorn and chips and candy all I want, and they don't stop me! Most hospitals would have you believe that crap is bad for you, but here, they say it's good for the soul, and I definitely follow that philosophy!"

I looked at all the bags of both eaten and half-eaten foods, along with her childhood friend, Avery. They watched their cartoon in silence, until the soap operas began, like the sun suddenly sunk away and became the boring, cold moon, and she shut off the TV, the colorful screen resting for what seems to be an eternity, until another morning arrives, another time to delve into the world of abusive cartoons.

Her eyes gaze upon me, her black devilish eyes that I could tell had some sort of hidden evil, as the doctors had told everyone that she was a psychotic patient, one who believed that these cartoons were real, that the world's men and women always carried hammers and guns, and holes led to a different dimension, and no one spat blood or even spilled it, it was simply lumps on the top of our heads and broken protruding teeth that shattered like mirrors.

Like the mirror I had back in that hospital, broken apart, as soon I saw my sallow, bruised face.

"What are you in here for?" she asked, as the cigar lit up, as the smoke cascaded around my body.

I wondered how she could see Samson, the hair that did have a brain, that could talk in a language that only I and she could understand. I wondered if I was truly crazy, as crazy as her, but she simply smiled, as her lids closed, her fingers seeming to get bigger with each puff of the cigar.

"Whatta in here for?" she repeated, as she blew the putrid smoke in my face.

I always hated the smell of cigars, the stench always making me choke, but I always hated anything you could smoke. It always left behind an awful breath and an awful burnt smell in the room, and I told her that I had forgotten nearly everything in my life, even on why I attempted suicide in the first place.

"So…let me get this straight, hair brain…you attempted suicide, and you hardly remember why you did it? Of all the stupid things I ever heard…"

"It's not…stupid, though I guess overdosing on the drugs that were supposed to help me was pretty stupid. But I'm here because I want to get help. And I want to regain pieces of my memory, as I have a son that I can't remember now. He was taken away from me. I know that must be some great injustice, but…"

"But you feel like he doesn't belong to you, is that right?"

"Yes. I feel like even though I pushed him out, I…can't remember why he was there. I can't remember my husband who isn't with me right now. He apparently disappeared, and I can't remember him at all."

"Well sweet cheeks, if he left you, maybe he wasn't such an important guy after all. He must've been a real ass," my hair said.

"Yeah," Peacock agreed. "If he left you, who cares? He doesn't care about you or your son. Why would you go through all that trouble to remember a guy who didn't do anything to help you in here?"

"Because I want to know why I had Nikolas, why I attempted suicide…I possibly attempted suicide because he left me, but…something tells me that's not the exact reason…there must be more to it than…"

"There isn't," she diplomatically stated, as she played with her lighter, wondering where the rest of her cigars went. "He left you, you got sad, you tried to kill yourself. Open and shut. See, wasn't that so hard to figure out?" She gave a jostling laugh, as she picked up her junk food as her cartoons went away to sleep until it was another morning, and Avery held onto her, along with her other toys, her so-called "minions", as they chattered away the afternoon, as Valentine had stated in the PA that we were to meet in the Dining Hall, as it was now lunch time.

—

I looked at them, all their smiling, proud faces as Valentine laid out all the food for them, the food that seemed to be so cold, as frozen as the meat loaf I had in the hospital. But Valentine told me they had nothing else, so I had to eat it, and then maybe at dinner time I would have a small choice as to what I could have for dinner.

They shoveled the food like hungry, starving dogs, some not even using their hands to eat (as Painwheel was demonstrating), and as they ate, even Peacock who ate her junk food what seemed to be so long ago, I stared at my food, gazing at the fishes' dead set eyes, and I could only sigh, and drink my water as I brushed off the white powder off the table.

"Hey, don't you brush off that powder!" Peacock shouted.

"And why not?"

"Because it reminds us of a good Christmas we had. Don't brush away memories, they're important. Don't brush them away, brush them away…" She collected the powder in a small pouch, making the table dusted in magical fairy dust again, and I was left somewhat disturbed at how dirty they had the whole hospital, the shit stains still not cleaned completely off.

I could still catch the scent of shit in my nostrils, as the parasite in the back of my head challenged everyone to a game of cards.

"Does anyone know how to play poker? You want to play, you want to play?" He was counting off the women who challenged to put their money and junk food on the line, as Samson continued to smile demurely, his teeth so brazen sharp, his eyes glowing like a pale orange moon.

Double had told Valentine that she considered gambling illegal, and that she wished we would be sent to Hell for our sins. But Samson only laughed, and said, "Look lady, we're already in HELLinger Hall. That's pretty close enough, don't you think?"

"That's not the type of hell I meant! I mean your bodies will be burning in a pit of flames, a pit where Satan will whip you and tell you you are a bad, bad man! All men are the same! All of them! Every damn one of them!"

She hid her face into her hands, grossly sobbing. I never knew a woman who believed that all men deserved to go to hell, even if he was only a smattering of hair. But Double knew the language too, the language of the psychotic and insane.

I simply sat and stared at my meal, as the other patients continued to talk over their plans for Sunday. Double obviously was going to church. Peacock knew only church seminars only played on Sunday, so there was no TV, so she said she might try to see a movie at the Little Innsmouth Double Entrende. She said they were showing a couple of Disney films. They weren't violent or evil like I knew she would've liked, but she said it "passed the time". Cerebella was planning on meeting her boyfriend Vitale and then coming back and spend the rest of the evening taking a bath and watching wrestling on the late night TV. Miss Fortune was simply going to go back to her old home, feed her cats, and then come back and watching professional bowling, until Cerebella and the cat lady began to argue over who got to have TV privileges, either subjecting others to the sounds of men grunting as they laid on top of each other and slam their heads into chairs or to men grunting as they picked up bowling balls and tried to hit some white pins.

"We're going to watch wrestling, Fortune! We really need another TV in here, but there so expensive..Nurse, can you decide which one can have the TV for the night? Nurse!"

"It's going to be me-ow! I want to know who wins the championship, the Nose-Sharks or the Klingy Kangaroos!"

"What kind of name is Klingy Kangaroo anyways? Or Nose-Sharks? Your shows are ridiculous!"

"Not as ridiculous as Peacock's shows! She's thirteen and she still watches little cartoons for babies!"

"They're not for babies!" she screamed, as she unveiled a knife from her dress, stomping on top of the long, dusted table, and she pointed it towards the scarred, unfortunate cat lady, as she told her to see what would happen if she cut her, that she was literally invincible ever since she swallowed the Life Gem.

"Just try and stab me, it surely will be a CAT-tastrophe!"

"I had enough of your damn cat puns for once, leave me be with me and my cartoons, or else I'll chop your damn head off, clean off!"

I didn't hear a nurse come down the dining hall, with her clacking red heels and the cross that would crucify them both, telling the patients that she will restrain them both if they continued to be violent, vigilant and frivolous, and the knife was pressed down to the cat lady's Adam's apple, and I could see the little girl's guillotine teeth smile fervently as she gutted her throat, her head lopped onto the table as if it was a fruit clean off a tree, falling, falling to serve those who were hungry enough to defend themselves…

A fruit for the hungry. A fruit for the ones who didn't know how to eat.

I thought the little girl was a murderer. A girl who wanted to defend her own world so much that she killed someone who wished to be dead for what seemed to be so long ago. She probably always wished for herself to be dead ever since she was a child.

And I remembered that I had once wanted to die a long time ago, too.

But my memories wouldn't let me see the truth of that feeling, as my heart was still inside my ribcage, a bird that couldn't fly from its rounded cage.

My father…what kind of a man was he? Was he a good man, a bad man? Would he kill these girls too for believing in his own world?

I couldn't remember.

The knife was cleaned of its blood, as I could see the girl gallantly smiling down the rest of the patients, down at me and Cerebella and Painwheel and Double, who kept screaming that she had committed the sin of the First Commandment, and I thought as I continued to stare into her abyssmal eyes, that the head of the cat lady moved, that her arms and body could still move without her head, that her tail continued to swish in the air, and I thought of how psychotic I truly was, to see a dead body become alive again like a zombie, her arms and feet and neckbones still alive, and the head had launched herself off the ground and tore into Peacock's metallic arms, the knife swishing in the air to stab her in the eye, to do anything to get this halved monster off her, and I could swear the eyes could watch her, that they glowed in the afternoon light as it poured into the dining hall, ready to singe the head off her.

They fought, but not for long. I could hear The Bitch coming back in, her needles and her red crossed eyes beginning to wander back into the Dining Hall…

Valentine finally came to see the monsters having their dinner party, Miss Fortune putting her lost head back on her body, Peacock hiding the soon newly bloody knife behind her back, whistling a tune similar to Steamboat Willy, while Cerebella continued to eat her half-eaten dinner, and Painwheel ate it with her fingers, so lumped together with the icy gray potatoes, reminding me of the clouds outside, of the winter that gathered outside of our doors.

Valentine didn't suspect anything, but I was supposed to report any violent activity to her, especially if the Miss Virulent Peacock was committing them. But everything seemed fine, as I saw Miss Fortune surviving the dinner party with nary a scratch, as Peacock cleaned her bloody, mean-streaked face knife, and Cerebella and Painwheel simply said nothing of the incident, as if they hadn't heard anything at all from these crazy two.

There was no bed time in Hellinger Hall. We were allowed to stay up as late as we wanted, as Peacock continued to watch her videotapes of Annie: Girl of the Stars, as Cerebella watched her wrestling, with no words or complaining from Miss Fortune, as she left in the middle of the night to check on her old, dilapidated home, to see how her cats, her "kitty friends" were doing, a can of pink tuna in her hand.

"Now don't get too CATTY while I'm gone!" she giggled, but I continued to watch the wrestling program, never complaining at all on what I wanted to watch, my body feeling coarse and cold as I sat in the hospital's small leather seats, pastel blue, my eyes watching the clock as I thought of how a day had already ended, of how time seemed to melt away in this new world I had traveled in, of how nights of the golden moon dissolved into the black liquor of the sky, into the golden sunny-faced afternoon, and never any other time of day had peeked over the sky, have I ever not seen the pink-rosy cheeked dawn, or the evening with its spread of blue cacao liquor and the grapefruit juice, mixing them in for a long, faceless night.

"That reminds me, what do I need to suck to get some liquor around here?"

He could hear my thoughts. He could hear of how I had wasted the days, being in this red-faced hospital, as he asked Valentine if we could have some whiskey, and she said for us to buy it ourselves and then come drink it here.

And he did. He did just that, while I was barely unconscious, trying to sleep away the violet night.


	3. III

They were smoking cigars and cigarettes, with the whiskey bottle in one hand, and cards on the other. His white sparks of teeth flashed through the darkness of the dingy hospital, while I still was half-asleep, and he was winning big, winning all the junk food that Peacock had, he was winning the ornamental cat pieces that Miss Fortune had in her room, decorated like shining eyes that gazed upon the visitor of her shrine, he was winning Cerebella's Hulk Hogan figure that she swore would sell for a lot of money in an auction, and I could hear the screaming and crying coming from the other room, possibly from Painwheel, still in her leather restraints, trying to break free of the "bitch" that had held her. Valentine said she was becoming nearly demonizing with her blades that she threatened to slash people with, as she continued to talk about what she wished to do with the nurse that had trapped her in that very room, and she continued to throw things and listen to the voices in her head that were conversing with her, telling her to kill everyone in the hospital.

Voices in someone's head was something that I plainly could not understand, but sometimes I thought I could hear them too, as I sat in that dingy room, and Valentine came over and gave me a liquid. It was clear, dashing in colors, and I asked her what it was, if it would help me at all regain my memories.

"It's LSD," she said, with great calm in her voice. "It's supposed to bring you into another world, a world that you will fully understand as long as your mind is open to everything. This is our medication here. I gave this to Peacock, Cerebella, and Miss Fortune too. They said they were ready to open their minds to a brand new world, and I hope you will be the same too."

The cup was grasped in my hand, while Samson continued to wheel and deal with his cards that were like the wheels of my father's old car, a Corsica. I wasn't so sure. I already was seeing plenty of visions. I didn't need to see more madness in my daily life inside this hospital, in the grave, cold halls that I had to walk, everyday, with no one pressuring me to take meds, or to engage in any therapy at all, except to take this LSD, which I had heard bad things about, but it was perfectly legal at this day and age. Doctors thought it was a brand new, life-altering medicine. And I thought maybe I would be able to remember why I had attempted suicide in the first place. So I drank it, the bitter taste shivering in my throat. And I waited, waited for a reaction.

I wondered why she heard voices, if there was something in her brain that misfired, a constant electrical discharge that gave her this world to dive into, this world of voices and hallucinations where men were faceless and where Valentine was a bitch that wanted to harm her, her needles always going inside her thin, pink flesh, and she wished, she wished, for the women to stop bothering her while she played in her world, as she gathered the small tables and placed her stuffed animals in each chair, and she conversed with them, intelligently, diligently, discussing of so many world issues, and I wondered too, if I was in my respective insanity, I would be as intelligent as she was, her fingers so hardwired to rip out the various voices in her head and listen to their advice, to defeat the Bitch, to make her pay for having her wear a mask.

Her room still smelled of shit, but I tried to sneak inside, as she talked to her little puppy and kitty toys, telling them of the nice things she wanted to do this weekend, but time seemed to go so quick for me, I barely realized it was Monday now, and I knew it would very quickly become Wednesday, then another Saturday, and I wondered if time always went this quick in Hellinger Hall, if the moon always ran across the sky and the sun always never shone her womanly face.

God had forsaken her. He had given her the gift of voices, and she didn't know how to deal with them. She wished she could take them away, she wished they would stop hurting her head, like needles that were inserted inside her cranium, and I could only imagine of how horrible it was to hear Satan's voice inside your head, telling you to kill people, telling you that you were worthless, a piece of shit upon a world full of people who were perfect and had such smiling faces for you to observe with your red, tired eyes. She couldn't imagine a world without voices. She couldn't imagine a world where she wasn't suffering constantly. And all the other patients simply never cared for her. Peacock was too much in her own world, Double tried to contain that monster inside her room, and Miss Fortune and Cerebella never seemed to care, as they were suffering themselves. This girl, she was troubled, her skin was thin, her bones were showing as she barely ate anything, except the mashed potatoes of yesterday, and I could hear her crying being muffled by the mask, as she asked each of her toys if she was happy. If she was a happy little girl, like she used to be.

"No, you aren't," said one puppy to the small, little, fragile girl.

"You aren't. I never seen such a miserable girl in my life!" said one kitten to the girl, who continued to cry, her tears ovulating in her eyes.

"I never thought you were happy. You are so sad…why don't you perk up? Why don't you try to be happy?"

She threw that toy across the room, hitting the shit-stained wall, and she cried again, regretting her abusing her toys, regretting that she was sick, that the moon and sun had never shined for her at all.

She wondered if she could ever be happy again. If the sun could shine. If the flowers could sing with their fragrant breaths. If she could find herself eating again like she used to, but she was anorexic, as the bones continued to prickle through her frail body, and I wondered if there was anything at all I could help her eat. She must've liked junk food like the rest of us. I still had a bag of a half-eaten burger in my room, and I thought I could help her know the joy of eating, that at least there were good things in this world, like food. Like hamburgers and milkshakes and fries. They were my one solace in this world. Eating brought me happiness, but yet I couldn't imagine taking food away from her in this hospital, knowing this child was as starving as any child in Africa, except she was a pale, white girl, an example of America's sadomasochism.

I wanted to come in and help her, even if I knew nothing about voices and psychosis (even if I was inside one, right now), but as I got closer to her, Samson told me that it was best she dealt with it herself, else she would become "clingy".

"She'll depend on us too much, Filia. She needs actual help, not to be in a place like this. They don't give any anti-psychotic medication, do they?"

"No," I answered. I felt like I wanted to cry myself. I had tears developing in my eyes too, the sheds of crystal enveloping my eyes. I really wanted to reach out for her, to show her that I cared, but I wasn't sure if Samson would allow to enter her world without any consequences…I knew of how scared she was. I knew that I used to been that scared, a long time ago…

When my dad wouldn't allow me to go outside anymore, that he wanted us to be in this darkness of our house, never knowing where my mommy was at, as he shut all the blinds and made my room as black as my hair, his eyes as red as mine. His teeth was always protruding out, much like Samson's, and I wondered if my father at all had any relevance to my husband who left me, but I couldn't remember anything more than that. Just my father, he always liked the darkness. He shut off the windows, he talked to the radio about if the policemen were coming to get him…he was paranoid, too often…

The only fragments of my memory I could remember. That my father was a possible paranoid, black-coated man, who always thrived in the darkness, who ate it with his ogre-ish teeth, who always ran away from the light. He was an actual vampire, a man who only wanted to suck blood on Saturday nights, with his reddened eyes looking to dispose of any waste on this planet. That waste, was people like us. Mentally ill. Barely eating. So frosted in the mind, never warm, never melting with sentimentalities. He hated people like us. The depressed, the chosen.

Samson said nothing, as we left her room, in search of the other patients. (Time had slipped between my fingers like sand, like an hourglass…) I could imagine they were doing something on Sunday mornings, and I could already imagine Double praying to the God that wasn't real like the Velveteen Rabbit, trying to wish away the monster that was inside her room, devouring all her peace, all her sacrosanct obsessions, but the prayers couldn't heal her, or her madness. Because religion was most often used as a distraction for the insanity these people had, but the truth of the matter was, they weren't allowed to believe in this god, because they were dirty people, full of mud, full of sin, and they couldn't pray to a god who wasn't as crazy as they were, even if God Himself had multiple personalities.

The sun shoved its fingers in the red candled room like a child wanting some candy. It was so bright, that I was so used to darkness for so long, I wasn't sure at all how to get my eyes adjusted to this light. My tired eyes still couldn't witness the holy fire of the sun, as it tried to shove itself into my life, but of course, I would have to reject it. I couldn't believe in happiness. Not after I saw that sad, little girl, who tried to convince herself that she truly was happy, even if the voices inside her head said she wasn't at all.

Time slipped again. I felt like it was Wednesday again. I wasn't sure of how many days had slipped around me. Time was a fragile thing too, always breaking, always breaking in my sharp, steel fingers…

A piano was singing.

A piano was singing a sorrowful song.

A piano was a tried and true method to sing out those sorrows, but I listened and waited, as time began to wisp like the wind, as I could feel minutes pass, hours, and I fidgeted in my stance, as I bit my lip and my hair continued to smile and laugh with the great ambivalence that surrounded me more than the piano.

I had felt pure madness at this moment. I wondered if I truly was insane, for having time go this quickly. I always thought if you were depressed, time went on droningly and dully, but it was the exact opposite, that time was going so quickly that I had missed days, weeks, maybe even months. I thought I was in here for many weeks, for a month even, without recognizing what I even did. Was this amnesia as well? Had I forgotten all about my many days, my many nights, and had lied here, wondering too much on my past that I was beginning to forget my future? The present was being forgotten too. I was forgetting every era of every decade, I didn't at all knew if this was still the '70s, but I wondered if I had even skipped ahead decades, even milleniums, and I had been in a hospital that skipped time so quickly, that no one knew at all what day of the week, what month, what year it was. It was always a wanton mystery.

But then I heard Peacock, screeching, like any other homeless youth would do if they somehow found out no one at all cared for them except for the institution they were trapped in.

I heard a piano tinkling in the next room. Valentine was trying to show the patients some musical therapy, some art therapy and some primal scream therapy too, but I knew that none of the patients at all knew how to play a piano, but no one at all wanted to listen to therapeutic medication known as music. I could see Peacock dashing her fingers into the keys, hearing discord and her angry, squawking voice singing a song that I knew she got the lyrics wrong, the Beatles songs that were destroyed and dismantled at the rising arc of her voice.

She loves you yeah yeah yeah…She loves you yeah yeah yeah…He loves you yeah yeah yeah…He hates you yeah yeah yeah…

Her hands continued to dittle with the keys. Her fingers, how horrific they were, mangled and chewed up, the steel of her bones, the steel of her rotten yellow teeth as she continued to munch on the candy, the candy of her delight, and the music continued to belt out of her baritone, the nurse holding her head and sighing exasperatedly, and I simply watched as they screamed aloud together, the music not a symphony, a harmony, but a screech, a cacophony, a screech that had echoed on inside the hospital's walls, and I didn't want to hear it anymore, the screaming, oh how it rumbled, rippled, with the screeches of Painwheel, with the screams and cacaws of Peacock, the bird with the shrill voice, the meowing of Miss Fortune, acting as much as a kitty cat she can be, and Cerebella chose not to sing, but continued to listen, Vice-Versa plugging her ears.

God died on the day that Peacock had sang about destroying all of America, destroying all of the country's livestock and the hamburgers and all the restaurants and have every single one of them serve candy, and she said yes, yes of course, I will make sure that the moon is illegal in the sky, yes, that there moon, and I will make it look a lone feather, and it will drop to the land, and I can taste it like a creamy cheese puff. She still believed the moon was made out of cheese. Only lunatics believed the moon was made out of cheese.

Scorches of her voice, they melted like lava into the canvas of the red hospital, and I only wished to believe that a God still existed, as if He did, I would be back in my house, wherever it was, with The Son, with my husband who had left me so long ago. Samson continued to smoke cigarettes, as I saw him nearly a sparse minute ago when he claimed he was playing poker with everyone, and the sun and the moon seemed to have quick feet, racing across the sky with dainty legs, reaching to the other side before the day was light, the day was dark. The day, the time, it changed so rapidly, that I wasn't sure at all if this place was a resident treatment center as they claimed it to be, but a time machine, that made time go forward so quickly, and only that.

I once saw how night had already appeared in Double's window, as she continued to read the Bible by candlelight, her demonic monster still escorted in his cage. I wondered if that demonic monster she had to hide was God Himself, as I gazed into his eyes and saw only mourning and loss for the people who had died with these mental diseases, but he smirked and told me, "I will consume you and every other patient inside here. I will eat you all. I will become the ocean, swallowing everything I touch, becoming water, and it is drowned back to the differing shades of the ocean, where I continue to swallow with pride, my feast. I will swallow you, and I will swallow everyone else. The ocean, it is beckoning. The moon is making the tide rise…"

My hands were shaking. I could see the monster open his vainglorious fangs and trying to swallow me like the oceans back in the beach I once knew, with my Son in tow, collecting the seashells that had risen to the top of the sand, from the ocean Himself, the Gods of the Sea, the Pale and Sick Goddesses…

While I could feel the ocean breathe on my neck, I suddenly realized as I facing that green, emerald ocean, that I had actually wanted to die.

Even with my Son in tow, I wanted to reach the sun at the end of the ocean. I wanted to drown, I wanted to choke, and I could feel the ocean embracing me with its cold dead fingers, and I could feel myself becoming one with the sea, becoming one with God…

We were goddesses. I knew that. We were goddesses of a world that no one could understand. Peacock was Persephone, Cerebella was Artemis, Miss Fortune was…was…

"It's time for lunch!"

Time moved so quickly, and it continued to consume me in its ocean of numbers and roman numerals and its minutes and seconds and hours, and I was beginning to drown in all of it.

We ate at the square table again. The square table with the powder, the containers of cocaine, the containers of ashes, and everyone ate this fish meal with glorious victory over the slain fish of the ocean, oh how Neptune would enjoy his meal gladly, with his fork inserted inside the fishy's scaly organic body, and eat, eat he would, with the gusto of a peacock with candy to change it colors into violent shades of red, into blue, green, flames that will consume us all!

I looked at the fish. It was my friend. My greatest enemy. We always knew how these fish always reacted. Redacted. They redacted with their genitals, their sharp pointy penii pointing towards the sun's uprising!

"Filia…"

I am a rambling buffoon! I am a rambling baboon! I have collected these words in the orifice of my mouth, jumbled them, and spat them out with great clarity! Sensible insanity! Sensible schizophrenia! I have ate all I could chew and I am here with God's Army, as Double continues to sing about her great Lord and Savior, the great wily willy Moon!

The moon! It shone again! With its various shades of rainbow! Red, blue, orange! The moon is quite colorful on the night of God's watch! May it shine, may it shine, may it shine again when the sun can and cannot shine! I am the part of all parts! I am the Wicked Mistress! I am the almighty and powerful Goddess of this book, this book that had lied on my canvas sheets, the Great Gatsby, I am Daisy! I am Jordan! I am all these women and more! I am even George B. Wilson, the man who ended the asshole's life!

They told me I continued to ramble, onward and onward, on the depravity of the LSD they had given me during lunch, during lunch…

I saw visions. Many visions. And I cannot believe at all what I had seen. Peacock was even more of a wild bird than what she was usually. Her voice, her cackles, her singsong voice, it had been replaced by Satan's tongue, the tongue and liquor of snakes, the red hot spill from her mouth, like devil's blood, and I continued to stare at the piano, as it grew teeth, as it launched itself against me, the keys clanging together in a discourous harmony, and I thought I couldn't make it alive, not without my anti-depressants I once was in that made everything, everything at all, much better…

Cerebella was stick thin. A stick caricature. Her appetite was stale, her breath salty, and she had told me that she was sick, that she didn't want to eat, anymore, and she threw up on the floor, a rainbow spew of orange and violet, and I told her she needed a rest, but she told me that she wasn't at all going to rest, but in fact, watch the world as it ignited in this indigenous flame and watch it cinder down to little ashes in a corrugated tube.

"Many patients have died here," she sang. "And you will be next! Will be next!"

God I didn't believe in luck, but here I was, about to die. My wish was coming true. I was going to become a martyr, as the piano kept clanging, as the voices continued to resonate, as I continue to whisper in her shallow little ear, "I won't die. I will just be rebirthed. Just like Jesus. Just like our lord and savior."

Her teeth, how they flashed like silver orbs! She appeared like a hot singeing flame from hell and had asked all of us what we were doing desecrating the lord's name in vain, but I had to tell her, I had to tell her that the world was becoming destroyed at its seams, and she wouldn't care at all to hear the word of the Goddess Army, the Do Re Mi as she continued to sing and screech with the vile wretchedness of Satan's rapehole.

"She is the devil!" She said with the clamor of a voice like a gypsy's, like a heathen, and she continued to spout lies about the world, the purple fluid flowing from her mouth like piss, her vaginal mouth like the Virgin Mary's after Jesus was born, and I could only wish that it would stop soon.

Miss Fortune, the cat who continued to cut! She was sawing herself with shrapnel, blades, and withered razor sharp words. She had cut herself. She had cut herself, they said to the nurse. And she said it was the LSD, she had an adverse reaction to it, but as they continued to restrain her, she continued to cry out into Sunoon, that this wasn't worth the precious minutes we have been wasting. This wasn't worth the godless heathen Christs we have been given birth to. She said the world is becoming nearly mad with fervor, with fire, and I could only wish it wasn't the same for me, and I sat down, cried, and continued to watch the visions of sugarplum fairies dance through my head.

Peacock, how her voice beckoned to be cut with the same shrapnel that had dilated Miss Fortune's arms! She said she saw the Sunoon rise in the sky, and she was going to go after it, she was going to fly, she was going to become Icarus trying to fly towards the orifice of the sky, and she reached atop the ceiling, the roof of the hospital, and she had screamed, she had cried, and she was about to fly, fly fly fly towards the God's Eyes, the silver-doted one and the blazing golden one, and she had jumped, soared, off the roof of the hospital, down, down, down till her back was broken on the dumpsters of our food and our medicinal supplies of Thorazine and needles and temperature takers!

Time slipped again. I could sense it slipped for so long, until I wasn't sure that it was either Saturday or Monday now…

The puke was cleaned up that morning.

Peacock looked normal, as much as she could be. Her stature was demented, her voice was sore, and her eyes were as well, along with her attitude. She had spoken about jumping off the roof of the hospital a while ago, that now her back was sore, reddened and broken, and I could only wish, as well, that it was me, as I liked pain alongside with Miss Fortune.

Miss Fortune was required to get stitches. They dispensed some medication for Cerebella to take care of her nausea. And Peacock was only given a back brace, for her small, twig-like, broken back.

She smoked a cigar, as she waited for her Saturday morning cartoons to come on. She wanted to watch her Wily Willy, the moon that had risen and felled on the Earth like the creampuff it was. And I couldn't believe within that psychoactive adventure, that it was Saturday, already.


	4. IV

**A/N: Seems to be an unfinished chapter. I went ahead and explained the girl's backstory in the next chapters, but they all sounded very similar. I only had a few days to make them up, and that's what made me not want to do NaNo anymore.**

I lied in my bed, listening to the whispers of the guests of the shelled, white, forgotten hospital among the rest of the white and green mentalities on the walls. I am sick. I am sick with despair. I have cried and called forth for the nurse to let me eat in bed, and she allowed me to, but not my usual meals. They were supposed to be "healthy". And I spited that word.

The red, oh how much red there was on these walls. I saw so much warmth in a place that was cold, was full of patients who hated themselves and each other. I heard Peacock complaining about her back, taking her narcotics to ease the pain, I hear of Miss Fortune talking quietly to her remaining cat pieces, that she wanted to see her babies soon, that she was coming, coming, to ease their pain of not seeing her, the cat lady that knew their hunger, their coldness, as I could see the winter not easing in its frigid breath, January, or maybe even February, still as cold as my eyes, as I watched the spiders crawl across my ceiling, spinning a delicate web that would only be carried away by the winter, snowflakes being captured by its silk threads, and the spider would cringe, dry out, and choke to death on the winter's touch, and never again would it mind the contours of my room, as I gazed, continued to gaze, into the eyes of the hospital, the place that I could walk out at any time, but it was too cold, too stark, too gray, and I lied huddled in my blankets, shivering, hoping the hospital had heat coming up soon.

I listened to the sound of the radiators turning on. But they didn't. I was confused. I was only hallucinating.

The LSD had left my system, but yet I am still crazy. I have never raved like this before. I continued to ramble on about religion, that Double's alter ego was really God, wanting to tear us all apart, wanting to destroy this hospital. I was visited by Dr. Avian, who made notes, and mentioned that I was hysterical, but he continued to leave me be on my bed, as I lied asleep against the red, talcum-powdered walls, and I spoke of the rivers that I had birthed, once I had attempted suicide. The rivers of time, as it continued to stream so quickly. I knew soon it would be lunch, but I thought breakfast was only just an hour before, and I was still full, and I still didn't want to eat. Coffee and bread was all I wanted. I demanded more coffee. Valentine said she will get it in a minute, but I lied asleep, and still, it had been hours since I had drank any coffee. Any more in my languished system.

The sun stroked my eyes. It's been so long since I saw the light. I wasn't sure at all if I would get up this morning, if I would be able to crawl from my bed, from the warm womb of Depression, and into reality. But I didn't felt like facing any of the other patients. I didn't want to face what my face looked like. Samson kept telling me I had to get up, but I didn't want to. I wanted to rot on the bed, until I was a corpse, my organs pilfering through the air, the smell of decay in their noses.

I wanted to see if I still had bones inside my body. Bones that were invisible, bones that rot due to my inactivity. I wanted to see what truly was inside me. I wanted to cut some flesh. I wanted to seek a tiny amount of salvation by only bleeding, just by a tiny, small bit.

Samson begged me to stop. But I didn't want to. I couldn't resist to. I saw the same shrapnel that was collected by the nurse's room and began sawing through my body like a small pinprick, the small red plush of blood coming out.

It looked like a rabbit. The rabbit that wanted to be real.

The God that wanted to be real to everyone.

I could feel the pain stinging my thumb. It was only such a small hole, but I realized it was much more, as I wanted to delve in deeper, as I wanted to see my body unwrapped in the folds of skin, the blood completely real and tangible, the heart beating so soundly, the lungs breathing airily, the stomach starved to a reduced state, like a small shriveling worm. I would lie by the side of the street, baked by the sun, and have my insides warm and dry. That's all I wanted on this cool, frigid night.

The crinkling of skin as I shed it. I could feel it underneath my fingertips, as more sateen ribbons of red began to burst from me, the bloody soul that I was letting out of my body, the gods that liked the smell of bloody, the pitied and the soulless, and I continued to watch Double's cascading eye as it seek me, and I wished that I could be swallowed up by the ocean of blood, by the ocean of the pitiless.

My skin was so toiled after the cuts. And Valentine only noticed after she went back in my room, as the blood continued to soak through my bed, my sheets, and I watched as the blood flowed like a river, and I sighed, empty, and I knew right then that I had run out of blood, that my sacrilegious sacrifice was no more to the Aztec gods and goddesses.

"Here, take this," she said.

I knew what it was. But as much as I wanted to keep bleeding, I drank it like a love potion, and expected to fall in love any minute now, as I slept in the sea of sheets, the sea of bedding, and I continued to watch as the nurse took my bloodied sheets and cleaned them, absolved them of their sins.

I lied asleep that night, wondering if there was anyone else in the world who was as clueless and as stupid as I was that night.

Samson whispered to me on that cold night.

"You're crazy. You've always been crazy. That's why I left you in the first place. That's why I tried to get a life of my own, without you."

And suddenly, I saw the emerald beach again, and I thought again if I wanted to take the dive inside the water, and commit suicide like I did that morning, the morning I was with the Son, and I thought I could swim against the shores and dive into Neptune's mouth, but I watched and seceded from the shore, as I couldn't imagine leaving him behind. But now I had fulfilled that promise. That promise that I was dead to my son, and that he left me, like my husband had left me, named Samson, so long ago.


	5. V

A bleeding risk, like an ulcer. I was in the nurse's station, getting my wounds restitched. They were already open. They had to be sewed back in.

A stuffed toy that lied to the little girl who wanted to be happy. I told her she was always miserable. And she cried, cried her heart out of her eyes.

I had told her that Jesus was a lie, that she will never recover her sanity in this hospital.

And she threw me against the wall, as I trailed behind a smear of shit.

I wondered if I was allowed to be this crazy, truly.

I had told her about Samson. She only told me I was hallucinating, but it was okay. Samson scoffed at her opinion. And went on and ate the cotton balls from the desk. He was hungry, and my nurses didn't notice that I was barely eating for three days. Days that felt like minutes.

I had told them of my hysteria, and they agreed I must rest, and they said I could rave as much as I wanted. But could I? Would I? As I mourn the loss of the Son, the loss of the Husband? I was bereaved with grief. I hadn't realized how much time had passed since I was ill, of the suicide attempt I had mustered, and now I wanted nothing more to do with this hospital, even if it's been so long, even if it's been so short. They told me I could leave anytime, anytime…

But I couldn't.

I had belonged here, in a world where goddesses had thrived. I had belonged with the shrilling bird, with the godless cat, with the monstrous woman, with the woman who had tried to find a place. I had tried, over and over, to find my place in this world as well, but I was so sick, so grievous with blue, that I wanted to skin my skin, that I wanted to find what my heart really looked like. I bet it was black. I bet it could be pale too. I was a mourning woman, trying to find my place among the hospital's women, and I felt that I was crazier than all of them, even the little girl I had lied to, even the woman I had pitied as her back was sore, like my heart.

The scars had cut across the blue sky of my mind, and I thought they were much like airplane vapors, like little knives cut through a package for a child. But I thought I needed more pain, as I grabbed a pair of sewing scissors and began to insert them in my skin, the blood pouring out like a geyser, the womanly patron nurses grabbing me and telling me to stay calm, as they would insert the Thorazine into my ass. But I cursed and screamed, I could no longer be with these Bitches, how they made me suffer, how they made me obey the equilibrium of unreality!

My eyes had sagged, nearly out of my skull, as I soon fell asleep with the blanket covering me, like a maggot digesting its food whole, and I wished, wished, wished, wished…

I heard a breath and a scream. I knew it was coming from the other side of the hall, as Peacock has jumped from her bed into her cupboards, wondering where "the flying hell were my goddamn cigars!"

I didn't take them, I knew that, as Samson shoved one in his mouth and lit it.

"Where are they? I demand to know where they are! I can't have them you say nurses? I can't have cigars and cigarettes anymore because they burn a hole in the cushions? I didn't burn no cushions! I didn't burn nothing, and you can't force me to not have my cigars with my daily coffee, my daily meal and my daily cartoons! Give 'em!"

I could see her throwing so many things at the nurses, her clothes, her hairbrushes and her cleaning supplies, her refrigerated ice cream. She said to suck it all down, as she needed her cigars, and without them, she might as well went and kill herself.

"Are you serious about that threat, Peacock?"

"Threat? It ain't a goddamn threat! It's the truth! I'm going to leave this hospital and jump out of it again, except this time not hit the medical waste dumpster and have every single one of my goddamn bones broken! You said this was an anti-psychiatry buildin', right? Then why can't I have my cigars, my suicide threats, my goddamn knives!"

She continued to struggle, to bite through the nurses' limp wrists, and I only sat there, staring at my own, and smelling the sweet smell of cigars as Samson smoked them.

"Fucking bitches! Fucking…fucking whores!"

Her cotton blue dress, her patient tag that was on her mechanized arms, she wanted to rip it, to consider herself no longer a part of the hospital anymore. Her teeth was metal like a bullet, as she cut through the shrapnel of the nurse's faces, and they bled, and they were ready to inject her with the same medicine I was on, the Thorazine that took me away from the shore and into the fogs of Demented Space. I smiled oddly as they continued to grab her, as they continued to try to inject the Thorazine, and I only remembered of the medicine's effect on me, oh I was so dreamy, dreaming of dreams I was a part of, the world that had died without me…

Scratch. Chew. Lick. Bite. It was all the same for the monsters in their little holes in Hellinger Hall. Samson laughed, as he said, "Looking for these, you crazy bitch? I have 'em! And I'll smoke every single one of them too!"

I wasn't sure if the nurses were doing anything at this point. They might've gave up and decide to give her her privileges. But Valentine's needle-like finger continued to prick her, continued to make her injected with Thorazine, but it did nothing, and she continued to scream and throw everything at them, bruising them with punches, even threatening them with stabbing them in the stomach and heart. I could hear the sully footsteps of Dr. Avian coming by, and I could hear him shout through the red warm hallways, "What the Sam Hell is going on over here? I thought I told you nurses that this was an anti-psychiatry policy hospital, not an actual one! Give her her cigars, all of you make me sick, forcing her to not smoke when she wants to, what the hell is the matter with you? Let her do whatever the hell she wants. And look at the mess all of you made! Pitiful. Pitiful. Get back to sewing up Filia's stitches and give her back her damn cigars, I feel for that little girl, I honestly do, and you're making her life even more wretched than what it was back at the orphanage! Give her a damn break, will you?"

Peacock had only sat by the edge of the staircase, her eyes wet with the memories of this orphanage he spoke of, and she picked up her things, even her junk food, and she went inside her room, hearing a clicking lock. She was too upset to show her face to the world, or to even care about her goddamn cigars.

She once was an orphan, who had witnessed the murder of her parents, haven't she?

Her parents, they were kind. They were loving. But soon, they had met with the fate of the knife, the fate of lover's scorn, and they were murdered, and she witnessed it all, her small prying eyes free of the knife's blade.

She had committed herself to her escape, her cartoons. How they always committed murders without getting caught. The policemen were always foolish men with long, thick mustaches. They never caught any criminals. And she laughed, like a shrill peacock, as the cigar stained the linoleum, as it curled back the wallpaper, and like her eyes, they were blind to the reality, the truth of her hurts, and she cried often, but never allowed herself to think of the justice that should be committed to this criminal, the one who had murdered mommy and daddy, who had made them go away.

She was feasting on garbage! Her teeth, caught between the hinges of solid metal and tinfoil! She watched cartoon movies by sneaking into theaters, with her own little bare feet and her dress so pickled they were showing scars in the folds. She was inspired by the matinee showing the cartoons of Annie: Girl of the Stars, that she decided she would be a heroine like her, but her wishes were crushed, flattened by the feet of Defeat, when she was taking away by the orphanage, her life of living freely as a homeless woman vaporized. But yet she thought that maybe it would be nice to have parents, to not deny her feelings, but she continued to rot her feelings away in her steel heart, and she promised to smoke away the pain in her cigars, the red end the spillings of her fractured actual heart that had dissolved away when she was mechanized, steellized, bronzied, goldenized, into this beast that had lasers for arms, for her eyes were black holes, her life much like a cartoon itself, as she gathered around her play friends and made them into cartoons themselves, and if I could believe that at all, she was soon homeless again, until she found Hellinger Hall, where she knew it was the only place she could heal herself. But the actual toxicology of the medication she could be given in the other hospitals, the restraints she could be given when she acted out like a tyrant, her hands, the paper gloves they were, she bent the rules however she wished, and she made the world of this Hellinger Hall her own. She had denied the orphanage, the memories of it, she had denied her parents dying. She said she was here only because she was crazy, and that was it, bottom line. She was psychotic, with her world of cartoons coming to life, but how much would it hurt to bring back her family again, to make her realize that she used to have a home back in Little Innsmouth? Would it make her cry? Would it make her laugh? She had nothing at all to worry about, she told herself. Because the secret was hidden inside her own mind, and the sanctity of the denial, it was kept as holy as a cross on her wall, reminding herself of the Christian values they had taught her back at the orphanage, their Christ-loving ways that weren't enough to keep her safe.

Keep her safe in her black mind, that thought of awful things, things that she wanted to do to everyone, the ones who had tormented her so, the ones who had kept her mommy and daddy away for so long, and she wanted to hurt all of America, all of the police who never went to her and asked the little frail skeletal girl what was wrong, that someone had murdered her loving parents, and her arms, they were flesh-like now, but she wanted to hug those who cared, but truly, no one did.

I heard the story from word-of-mouth from the nurses, as I sat and sulked silently, letting the Thorazine continue to drift me away from the tides of time.

"Lunch time!"

"Dinner time!"

I had sat here for such a long time, my feet and hands cold, the nurses' station always so frozen, I felt like I was inside the air conditioner, as it continued to blast freezing air in my face, and I wrapped the blanket like the folds of a wings of a butterfly, and I made Samson lead me to the Dining Hall, as he smoked another cigar, as Peacock had thrust her fist through the nurses' station and grabbed her carton of cigars, her shiny machine hands bleeding and full of flesh after all.


	6. VI

Cerebella Cerebella, won't you come and be my Cinderella?

She said no, and had kept it as that.

Cerebella Cerebella, won't you come under my umbrella, the one with many pointing eyes and fangorous teeth?

She had scoffed, as she knew this wasn't what she wanted to be. A woman with so many psychiatric problems. But she needed a rest. She wanted a rest from her missions, the missions the Mafia had given her, and she hoped they couldn't find her, because she regretted everything she had ever done. She regretted taking a diamond from the museum's rusty hands and give it to the Mafia, who were rich, splendorous, they had everything in the world, and she would give them everything in the world, for her Vitale, her boyfriend extraordinarie, who had promised her that he would give her everlasting love, everlasting peace inside her mind, which it was often racked with guilt, with pity, and she sat on the leather seat as the car drove by the venues for Little Innsmouth, as Vitale continued to make fish lipped faces at her, as Vice-Versa continued to threaten him with his muscles, that he wouldn't let the girl be taken away by some scum-sucking man like him.

But Cerebella had loved him. He was a father figure to her. Her father had left her a long time ago, while her mother was mostly strangely absent. She assumed she snorted cocaine and drank to deal with the abuse her father had given her. She ran away to the circus as a result, and the hat that was worn proudly on her head, it had took a liking to her, and she was victorious in each circus showing, her eyes glittering with joy as she was soon realized in the hearts of many children, many men and women, and Vitale…he had captured her heart, and he wasn't letting it go until she did all these favors for him.

"Come on, rob the bank with us! We need the money!"

She did so.

"Come on, let's grab some liquor, get wasted like good gentlemen and women, and lie in the bathtub, on the ceiling, in this rich abode our boss has!"

She did so.

Her eyes were half-lulled by the taste of liquor. She expected that there was some pill inside one of her drinks. She wanted to accuse the accusatory, as she was sent to a world of pain, a world of despair and hurt and anger, as she was violated, her organs white, her organs wet with decay and pride and greed mixed together in a cream liquor she refused to drink.

"Don't worry about it, babe. Just try to forget it."

She did so.

"What do you mean I could've raped you? We're together, aren't we? That doesn't mean you weren't willing to sleep with me."

"But…" she cried.

"Hush little darling. Nothing can hurt you anymore. The worst is over. Let's get married."

She did so.

"Hey babe, can you pass me my cigarettes?"

She was a wedded wife, and now as she came to know this father figure, he was her father, except she hated him more than ever. She tried to pique a grin as she shuffled the pack of cigarettes from her bosom, and he smoked luxuriously, the smell of burnt tobacco on her skin. It was more vile than it was before.

"You're living the good life, right?"

"But," she said.

"No buts darling. When are you going to have your child? I thought we could name him Chris. If she's a girl, we can name her Sonya. Wouldn't that be nice, darling?"

"But," she said.

"It'll be fine. Just live your life to the fullest and soon we'll be a normal, happy, functioning family, like we were destined to be.

Her lip was sewed tight. She couldn't lift her teeth to say a single world against him without getting interrupted. About the rape, about how she never wanted to have a family just yet with someone she only knew for a few months, but her lips, they were clamped, like clams protecting her pearly white teeth.

She wanted to kill him. But she wasn't sure how to do so.

But. That was the key word there. But.

But she could get a gun from the boss and kill him herself.

And she could go to the abortion clinic and abort it. She would kill two lives. But she never believed an unborn child was truly a miracle when it was unearthed from the womb. Babies were only babies. Not gold or diamonds, as the mafia had led her to believe.

She lied awake at night, unearthing different ways she could kill this man. She could stab him to death and wipe away the evidence. The police would only think another mafia member did it. But the gun was the most efficient way. Shoot him in the head, have some mess to clean up as his ripened hole continued to rot, and she could simply drag his body to a street, where the police would know that he was killed by another gang member, or a deal gone horribly awry. She wasn't sure if she could get the guns, but it was worth it, to have her best man killed in a blast of lead, to have her teeth always shining for the ones who truly loved her, the crowd, the people who always sat and watched her, amazed at the gifts she held. She wanted to go back to the circus. But she had some important business to take care of: to kill the father that had left her mother, the one who came back to haunt her, to put that bullet in his mouth and make him suck on the head, like the dick he made her suck so long ago.

She asked the boss that she needed to protect herself a little bit more on this mission she planned to do with Vitale, and he gave her .22 caliber pistol.

She said, "Thank you."

She said, "God never made me want to have this child. You don't know what it means when a woman says no. You don't know how much this hurts me, so deeply…"

"Why are you aiming that gun at me, babe? I thought we had something together! You know I can shoot you too you know. You know my finger is stronger, you know I can shoot you in your fuckin' head and end it."

"It's the same thing, babe. I don't care whether you kill me or I kill you. Each end has happiness inside it, and I'm willing to sacrifice my life for the sake of not having you and this child anymore."

"But," he said.

"Enough."

And she did so, the trigger hitting his skull and lacerating his brain. He was dead in a flash.

The gun smelled like burnt gunpowder. The same powder that had ended the man's life. And she wished she could use it to end her life, but she had much better plans. Life was more worth living than to sacrifice herself for her father figure. She knew she had the head of the gun in her mouth, and so wanted to pull the trigger, but she couldn't.

Life was sacred, all those Christians and Catholics had told her.

But not her baby. It would have to die.

She wished she had the guts to even shoot the baby in her womb. But she couldn't bring herself to that. She would likely die because of it. And she kept believing that the baby maybe wasn't such a bad, horrific demon, but she knew she couldn't live with it. She had to make it go away, and she had to make it suffer for what her father figure had done to her.

She was left on the streets, as she couldn't go back to the mafia. She couldn't find the circus returning back to Little Innsmouth, her little source of happiness in her life. She felt loved by the eyes of the men and women and children, and now, she was loved by nobody, not even by her baby, as she could feel it sucking more of her life, it resonating inside her with fangs and claws that stitched the insides of her organs that were melting from the creme liquid.

She had no money to get an abortion. She had no insurance. She had absolutely nothing to work for, and she knew as she suddenly felt the pangs of birth, she couldn't get rid of her child, the child that she hated, the child that didn't belong to her, but her father figure, the man who didn't want to say no or even listen to that same word.

The baby, it couldn't come out, could it?…could it…

She wished she could just let it be absorbed by her body. She wished it never had to come out.

But it did so.

And its face, irregular, hexagonal, the child's hand and feet so small, nearly flippers, the child that she hated, it was a monster, a monster that she could never love, as it continued to reach out for her, but she backed away, and while she couldn't leave the child in the alleyway dying alone, she took it to the doorstep of a family with a note on his slimy, bruised neck that said, "I don't want him. You keep him. I don't want to hear another word about this child again."

And she did so. She left him, and she never heard another word from him again. And it was so, that she decided to live on the streets with her hat, Vice-Versa, performing small tricks for a little spending money for food and whatever else she needed. She sometimes stated to people that she was raped, and they gave her some extra money. She felt bad, trying to get sympathy from the same men and women who once loved her, but she needed it, as she thought if one day she kept performing many tricks and saved up whatever she needed to get an apartment, she could get a real job and start her life all over again. Without knowing of the man who had unjustly hurt her, and the baby who hurt her with his deformed face, with his honeycomb-like features.

Sometimes she still wondered about the child. But she knew she should let it lie, and hoped that the family had either accepted him or killed him. Because she couldn't do both of those herself.

Hospitals were expensive. Ones for the mind. She wanted to hide away somewhere, forget about everything, go to a place where she would truly be accepted, a place where everyone was crazy, everyone had problems, and she, she could have no questions about what she committed in the past, just her insanity, her misanthrope views could be realized in the hands of doctors, and she would get all the help she needed, anything at all that would help her aching mind, as it continued to crack like an old pot, her head thrusting with pain as she remembered the diamond baby and its flipper arms, and she wanted to escape from the memories of hurting her fans, hurting her husband who had betrayed her, and the child she betrayed that she never wanted, and she could feel the bile rising in her throat, like sharp acidic razors, and she clawed at it, hoping that she wouldn't throw up, wouldn't throw up…

And she did so.

She walked in the alleyways, counting her pocket money. It wasn't enough to get anything in the stores, or in the restaurants. She was eating well for a while, but now, she was hungry, her skin shriveling, and she wanted to go back to the mafia's hideout, where she could have all the wine she could drink, where she could eat all kinds of gourmet food, even better than an authentic Italian restaurant, and she could take warm baths and showers again that spout from the ceiling, the entire floor made of marble, the coach cushions made of mink, the flowers made of peacock feathers, the cats that she always enjoyed playing with, the cat figurines her boss had always put on the mantelpiece of the grand chimney, rimmed with gold…she wished she could have the luxurious life again. To smoke cigars, to play poker, to eat the best lasagna and spaghetti she ever ate…but that was all gone. Because he had vilified her. He had made her dead inside. And she wished she could shed any sort of tear, whether crystalline or salty or bitter, she wanted to die on this street corner, as the circus never came around again to find her, as the love had gone out of her life like a bullet through a heart.

The clam continued to hide her pearly white teeth. She didn't smile for a few weeks. She thought she would never smile again.

She saw a white flicker of light enter her way, through the amber, sodium-colored lights in the alleyway. He was wearing elaborate boots made of the finest leather, he had fiery red eyes that had forsaken all those he saw, and he was wearing a white lab coat, made of white snakes, the albinos that got to die for his wear, for his science ways.

"You want to go somewhere, don't you?" he asked, as he ushered in a cigarette, her holding it deftly between her forefinger and thumb.

She very rarely smoked. She even hated to. But she felt as if she needed an escape from this monstrous dilemma. The man seemed nice enough, even with his evil sunset eyes.

She smoked, a little bit. To at least calm her down. She crushed the cigarette with the help of Vice-Versa, and she sat on her dump of toys, her collections, yet again, as she waited to hear what the man had to say.

"Are you looking to go somewhere?"

She stared at him with a brazened look, as she nodded, continuing to pilfer smoke through her clammed mouth.

"Do you want to go to a hospital, one that will treat you right?"

"I'm really not crazy. I never needed to go into a hospital, and I never needed help from men like you, men who would take advantage of me any change they could get and leave me for the wicked widow that I am. My husband got shot from another member of his gang, and now I'm homeless. I can't go back to the circus, and I wished I could go back to how my life used to be before, but…"

"But?" he asked.

"But," she said.

"You can come to Hellinger Hall, which is a hospital that prides itself on its anti-psychiatry policies. No drugs, no restraints, nothing as long as you be yourself and you can go as mad as you want. It's a palace compared to all those other mental hospitals. And I won't charge you anything, as long as you assist me in my research and experiments. You can even get out any time you want, to see the movies, to go to the store, even just…leave, whenever you want. Our doors aren't locked. There's barely any security. All I ask is to get help at our resident treatment center and live life like you used to. I heard a little bit about you, Cerebella. You used to be a circus star, until you took the life of your husband and gave away your baby. And now you're homeless, and I bet you want to be in a good, warm place for the winter, don't you?"

She wondered how this man knew she had killed Vitale. How he knew about her baby. She figured he could blackmail her if she didn't went inside the hospital. But…but she had no other choice. She could continue living in the streets, or she could live in a place that actually had some slight heating and served free food and allowed her the freedom to do what she wanted.

"I know you're going to blackmail me if I don't go, are you?"

"No! No my sweet Cerebella, nothing like that! I just know about you because we did some research on your background. The Skullbrain knows everything, my sweet dear Cerebella, the Skullbrain can tell me whatever I need to know and it will give me the answers. You can get your answers too, if you just help me with my experiment. Is it a deal, Cerebella? Can we agree that if you conduct this anti-psychiatry research that I can give you the knowledge of the Skullbrain? You can learn everything and anything you need to know, even the cure to heart disease and diabetes and how to get to the next circus that's traveling all over the country. Can you do this for me? For Little Innsmouth?"

The Skullbrain. She had never heard of such a thing in her life. She wondered if she was psychotic, hallucinating these words that were coming from his mouth, this man that wished to exploit her misery, this hospital that possibly never existed…

But, she said.

I had to.

And she did so.

"You're going to need this, by the way," he said, as he gave her some white liquid in a cup.

"What is it?"

"It will give you all the answers you will ever need to know about life, my friend. It will make you a genius and a creative artist, all at once, the liquid straight from the juices of the Skullbrain…"

She shook her head. "Is it LSD?"

"Yes."

She wondered if at all she needed to drink. She wondered if she needed to lick the liquor that will give her mind extraordinary powers, to allow her to see the truths and lies in everything, the darkness in light and the light in darkness, the positivity and negativity of all of the atoms and elements.

And she drank it.

She did so.

The hospital was contorted in her vision, nearly hexagonal in shape, and she screamed as she remembered the infant she had killed with her unconcerned hands and she thought again, of why she haven't thought of ending her life already.


	7. VII

Miss Fortune liked the taste of bleach. She drank it in miniature teacups, hoping someone will come and help her, as she ate very little, and she wanted the bleach to clean out her insides, because she was rotten and spoiled, and she wondered if her kitties would come and help her, but even if they had eyed her when they drank their flasks of milk, she ignored them, sat on the green torn through couch, and waited to die.

Bleach tasted like tea. Almost. Almost like black, sugary tea.

She continued to sip it, as she watched TV, her cable going out soon in her rusty shack of a house, so she might as well have enjoyed whatever she was going to see before it disappeared. She watched the news. Then Wheel of Fortune. Then PBS. Then Wheel of Fortune again. And then PBS again, because they had a special on the universe with Carl Sagan, who she thought was the only decent human being on the planet. Then she went back to dying on the couch, her throat raw and rusty.

Her hand was on the handle of the phone. She could call 911. It was only three numbers. Three presses of the dial. And she could get help. She could have people help her. She could get doctors all over the world to help her melancholy, her reasons for only eating tuna twice a day, her decreasing desire to have milk or coffee, her desire to eat bowls of potato chips, those were all gone, and she needed people to examine her, to cut her up into many different pieces and see what she was like on the inside, have her nails cauterized and her blades hidden. She continued to hurt herself, until one day, she had decapitated an arm.

The arm was lying flat in the bathtub, with a pool of its own blood. She thought she couldn't come to her only family, the kitties, with her arm missing, with her limbs frozen in a freezing container and selling them to the poor who needed them, to get whatever money she needed to avenge her fallen family.

Her family were killed by the mafia. She was the only survivor, and she remembered as she casted her gaze onto her ceramic cat figurines, there were still some that had a splatter of blood on their faces. As if the cats themselves had committed the murder. And she wished she could clean them, but her water was turned off a long time ago. She took baths by licking her fur and dipping in the Little Innsmouth Community Pool without anyone knowing, at the stark hours of the night.

The bleach was making her puke blood. She held onto the toilet seat with a little remainder of shit and piss inside it, her disgust more violated as her nose was stricken with the scent of her messiness. She wished she could use a litter box instead, but she knew she was still a little more human than the rest of her kitties, and she couldn't wish herself to be one of them. God was cruel.

She wished that anyone, anybody, would come and help the poor kitty cat, because she was stuck in a tree. The bleach had made her climb it all the way to the top, and like the cradle, she was going to drop, and crash and bleed her body all over.

Her arm was in the bathtub, as her razor shaved it off.

She continued to puke bleach and blood.

The blood that had collected on her kitty toys were grimacing, telling her that she wasn't wanted here, and her family, they had always hated her, when she knew it wasn't true. Her father was as much as a cat lover as her. Her mother was allergic, but remained in the house, with claw marks amplifying to rashes as the kitties continued to climb her. Her brother…

Oh her brother…

He was autistic.

But he adored cats, so much.

He was nonverbal, only speaking in meows, like the kitties, and he liked to eat tuna, like the kitties, fish and milk and kitten treats. But despite getting sick off the treats, and despite his strange idiosyncratic behavior, she still loved him, and she wished he was still alive, before the mafia had cruelly slaughtered them.

Her brother had always liked card games. He knew how to play all of them. They often would play poker, until the nights turned a rusty blue, and the dawn became oozing with blood.

The blood that she had carried now, in her one arm.

The blood she was vomiting in the toilet.

"Kitties, what should I do now?" she asked.

And they told her to wait, to lie and sift silently, until the blood had run its course.

She wondered why the mafia had chosen her family, out of all people.

She wondered why she wanted to die. She wondered why she thought of herself as a cat and nothing more, a feline inside a woman's body, that wished to come out and be loved and petted for all the world to enjoy her furry appearance, her ears that pricked at the sound of tuna cans opening, the teeth that were sharp as a razor's edge, the same razor that she had witnessed had sawed through her bones, her face, her arm, her lies.

She imagined she could be chopped into many different pieces. Have her body in disarray in the bathtub, her arms sifted in the bloody water, her legs frozen in their exact spot, wired with scars, wired with decay…

To die was to sin, she told herself.

As she clicked the phone numbers, the three magical numbers, on the phone, choking with vomit and spew, and she tried to tell them what had happened, and why if they didn't come here in fifteen minutes she was going to die.

Suicide was sin.

She looked at the photograph of her brother, his innocent face, as they picked up a mewling kitten, just imbued with life, its eyes so shining and blue…

She wished she could do something, anything to bring her family back.

Even sacrifice herself, if it was necessary.

To be alive is to fully realize life at its true potential…to want to die is a sin in itself…you are not allowing God to give you the gift of life…

She had always wanted the gift of death.

To bite into that apple, like Eve…

She could feel herself slipping away…

She could feel her blood drain from her body…

Her arm, it moved, with a slight twinge, with a slight twinkle of movement.

She was so imbued with life at this moment, when she was at her most dead-like state.

Her parents warned her about that devil in the red, that he wanted to take away both her and her brother, his pitchfork ready to bleed into them.

He can take her, but not her brother.

And she caught the glimpse of her brother's dead-sullen eyes as she blacked out, the world becoming invigorated with darkness, and she fell asleep for a long time, until she was woken by the nurses in a hospital, as they sewed her arm back together, with the scars so prominent on them like scratches on tree bark, listing tentative loves.

"That won't work you know," she said. "My arm is basically just being glued together. It won't become alive again. Like it used to."

"Can it, tuna breath," she replied.

The nurses were so rude to her, their faces always mocking her. They fed her kitten food and milk like she requested, but they often called her a freak, called her a little pussy, a pussy kitty that didn't want to face reality and face that she was a human, not a cat. Her brother probably didn't realize that either, but it was all she could do, to remember him.

"You're probably autistic too, tuna breath," she said, as she finished the last line of thread, and she said nothing more as she left the room, leaving Miss Fortune in cold, white stark blindness.

She didn't understand why these nurses were so cruel. Weren't they supposed to be nice, gentle to their patients? They thought she was very strange, a very strange cat, and because they were dogs of the system, they hated anyone who tried to be so radically different, individuals to themselves. And she listened to the small radio in the corner, playing various disco tunes, and she wondered if she could relive those memories with her brother again, to know that she wasn't the only one in this cat-strophe.

Her arm she sawed off wiggled. It was able to move again. She bended it around, the joints working smoothly, and she was amazed that the sewing even sewed her bones together. She wondered if these nurses were magical mistresses, who were always rude, who didn't like anyone that wasn't their own species. She thought this reality she entered was much different, as she once saw the cut off arm move in the bathtub, and she wondered if she was truly immortal, from the drinking of the holy water bleach.

"You attempted suicide."

She stared at her, her eyes still sore and red from the lack of sleep, but she said she only drank bleach and that was all. She thought it would stimulate her more than coffee.

"You're that stupid, hm?"

She frowned, her creases deepening. These nurses knew how to hurt her. They were cruel, old witches who were Aspergerian enough to not know how to interact with anyone real. But she believed, more and more in her psychosis-addled mind, that she was no longer real, but a part of the mentally ill society of people. People who were completely different from the rest. They were strange, kooky, and they hated to feel. The nurses came and diagnosed her with Stupidity and Delusional Disorder (Like The Rest of America Spectrum Disorder), and she sat in her thin blankets, watching the small TV in the corner of the room play black and white cartoons, and she wondered why the cat in the cat and mouse cartoons was always abused so awfully. Cats were God's creatures, and they didn't deserve that. Not by anyone.

Her brother tried to save an abused cat, one that had a swollen eye, broken bones from him beating it, and he cried so softly, as if he was one of God's disciples that was injured and about to die, and while it meowed tenderly in his arms and gave him a wrap-around hug, he gave the cat he dubbed "Mittens" a proper burial, and even gave it a small white wooden cross, and he placed flowers on the grave every day, shedding his tears for what possibly may have been the greatest cat that the world had ever known. And she placed her hand on his shoulder, and she told him that he wasn't stupid for mourning the loss of a cat, but it was one of God's creatures that was given a miserable life, and it should be mourned like the rest of everything that humans mourned, and they held hands, as they hoped the cat would be given a safe passage to a heaven that humans couldn't ruin, a heaven where it was loved and worshiped.

"Why does God give you the option to hurt people?" her brother asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know. I wished there was no way for things like this to happen, but…they do, and the best thing we can do is help those who have been hurt by other people."

She had begun to hate humans wholly. They were despicable creatures, always devouring, always hurting, always burning, always drinking and killing and slaughtering and drugging and abusing and loitering and screaming and crying…she had begun to hate the whole entirety of the human race, and soon, she no longer believed she was human, but a cat. An otherkin that wished to be recognized as not a slobbering disgusting part of human society, but part of the cat and kitty society, where they simply loved and played and be annoyed by all of their master's actions. And on the day the mafia had shed blood of their family so much, she had decided that humans were too bad to be a part of. She began to dress like a cat, lick herself like a cat, eat like a cat, and only be with cats and the remainder of the souls of her family, as their pictures continued to gaze at her actions, and they wondered what was wrong with their little homeless daughter, who lived in a shack she constructed with blankets and plastic bags, and she slept so soundly in her sleeping bags with the kitties all around her, and she thought she had lived as a deconstruct of human society, and she would rather live like this, as not a productive member of society, but a kitty, through and through.

The muse nurses had stared at her through the long glass door, and they wondered if she would ever break out of her delusion, if she would ever forgive humans, but they only thought of one solution, or two, namely, to go to a state psychiatric hospital and get psychologically evaluated and be prescribed with strong anti-psychotics, or to go to the brand new Hellinger Hall, that allowed patients to live in their delusions and not be prescribed with anything but LSD, and they wondered why this was an option at all as they never believed in differing therapies except for good old shock therapy, but a man in a white coat and red eyes had paid their shabby hospital handsomely for this girl to go inside his ward, and they opened the door with they key-handled fingers, and they talked to the cat lady, as their old wrinkled faces continued to utter a scowl.

"We're giving you two options, lady."

She drank her saucer of milk, as she looked in the faces of the very old, withered nurses, their skin so folded it looked like a crinkled bed when she woke up in the morning. She wondered why these nurses were so old, so magical, despite being in a hospital that looked slightly below normal. She could see the cockroaches scattering throughout the floors, nothing that was really new to her, as the withered lady crushed the insect on her foot, the shell crackling like fire.

"One choice is for you to go to a state mental hospital, because lady, you got serious issues. Who drinks bleach to kill themselves nowadays? Why do you believe you're a cat? You're delusional. We suggest this option for you to get help."

"And what's the second option?"

She coughed briskly in her hand, sniffled and croaked in her saggy skin and nose and throat, and she rolled her eyes, knowing this kitty wasn't going to go to a real pound, but one that was a no-kill shelter.

"The second option…is for to go to a state of the art alternative resident treatment center called Hellinger Hall. They don't give you medicine. They don't tell you the truth about your condition. They just let you be yourself and find treatment in that. What a load of baloney. I'm sure you want to go there, don't you?"

She heard of state mental wards. They were very dark, depressing places, where many patients were restrained and given strong medicine that didn't allow you to think straight and had many patients who were deeply insane, patients that were as deep in their delusions as her, if she could call them that.

She hated thinking of being in a real mental hospital. She didn't need to be trapped there for many years, when she was perfectly happy with her kitties, in her shack, with her plastic bags full of wet cat food and tuna and kitty toys.

"I know where I'm going. I'll be going to Hellinger Hall. That sounds meow-tastic!"

"Shut up. I thought so. Go get your bags of crap and meet Doctor Avian in room 5. He will take you to that dump and teach you that it's okay to be crazy. God, just dealing with you lousy maniacs makes me want to have another cigarette. Anyways finish your damn milk and go. We're tired of your face, tuna breath. Goodbye, and make sure to pay us soon, because we actually tried to give a rat's ass about you."

She said she had no money, and was, in fact, living as a homeless person for so long, in a house that her family gave to her that she couldn't afford to keep the water running and the heat on, so often, she went to a shack to cleanse herself at the pool, and to sleep warmly in her sleeping bags, as the entire house was colder than the reality of the outside world.

"Then get the hell out and never speak to us again."

And as she got her bags of tuna and cat food and left, the nurses sat together in the break room, smoking cigarettes, wondering how they will ever get any more money helping ungrateful and homeless patients that never had a single dime in their pockets, not even a sliver of a penny, a sliver of silver.

She had come to the hospital, wishing to forget the deaths of her family. But they still resonated deep inside her, and she wished she could have her brother back, her brother in soul and heart, her heart that was chopped up in many different pieces, the remnants still beating.

Like her arm inside the bathroom, magically stitched together by the Fate Sisters inside Mount Olympus, wishing to piece together all these events in a piece of string, then snip it off, her body never ceasing to decay.


	8. VIII

**A/N: Unfinished and last chapter I made. I will have to expand on it when I can.**

She had a bruise on her eye, a black hole from the fall she had experienced when she jumped off the roof of the hospital. She said something hit her eye and it caused the blood vessels to swell underneath it. She began to use such complicated explanations for things. Unlike her.

There was some tea in the cupboards of the hospital, and I drank some, trying to calm myself down from the LSD experimentation. I had witnessed no great vision that they had promised me, but rather, God-wretching things that I wished I would've never drank that turpentine potion in the first place. I felt sore too, my mouth and jaw bones were aching, and so was my hair, as Sampson tried to separate himself from me, but he failed as he was a parasite feeding off my brain waves, and he closed his teeth around the supper that Valentine had made, chewing slowly, not saying a single word since the incident. Samson had witnessed things he wished he never had.

I could hear the tinkling of the piano again, and the banging caused by Peacock as she continued to screech horrifically of songs from her favorite cartoons, but I no longer wanted to be a part of this hospital, I wanted to detach myself from it like Samson had tried with my head, but yet…I couldn't. I wished to stay here. I knew a real hospital wouldn't help with me gaining my memories back. With the medications they would give me, I knew they would simply subdue them, trap them in a sheet of ice, and I would wish to dive in the frozen black water, trying to get them back.

Nikolas. How could I have forgotten him? The Son. But yet I did. But he came out of me and my husband, and I believed I once saw his tiny fists balled up like coiled snakes, his face so red and ripe like the sun, a beet that came out of the earth, and I never had once said a kind word towards him, but yet he called me Mommy. I knew I was never nice to children. They drank milk when they were infants, like mewling kittens, and they cried when they couldn't get their way. They cried when they were hungry, weak, sadist and lonely. And I knew I could never trust them. They had mouths like ringworms, their eyes were pupil-less and they never had tendrils of hair. I couldn't believe that urchin had come from my eyes, my mouth, my soul, my breasts, and I had pricked my hands for this child, I had pricked my body with an organic needle to birth him, and I thought I was beginning to get sick, as I saw that needle again, so white, so pale, and I had stabbed my head to think of having a child, maybe another for all I knew, as I thought I was beginning to gain weight and becoming gamely and homely yet again, and I knew I had to get rid of this child if it truly was inside me. The serpents inside my body, with their soft mouths and no fangs and wanting to suck all the life out of my body, they had to slink away out of me, without consuming all my eggs with one gulp.

I never liked The Great Gastby. I was reading it, but I never could sympathize with any of these characters, or even care about Gatsby's death, or even care for Daisy, so vain but yet so delicate, a narcissus. The white petals were much like her dress at the beginning of the story, blooming to a bleeding cum white. How could I love her? How could I love anyone in the Roaring Twenties when they were so selfish, so ignorant and so full of themselves?

I hoped the people in the story had choked as much as Gatsby did, even if they were fictitious, not at all real and tangible. But even I felt this reality wasn't tangible. I wondered if it truly was true that a little girl could have metal rods on her arms, with evil eyes attached to them, with black holed and hellish eyes that bruised so visibly under the light, as she drank yet another cup of coffee to stay up during the night, another cigar to keep her awake.

I have heard many of the different stories from the nurses. Of Cerebella's rape and her escapement from the harsh world of the mafia, the harsh world of having a married life, of Peacock's murder, everyone of these woman were homeless before they were captured by Hellinger Hall, and it was the only way they could escape from the dreary life of begging for change, of eating garbage and of trying to run away from the things that made us weak and so frail.

But I wasn't so sure about Painwheel. Why exactly was she here? Or Double, the obsessive nun that hid monsters inside her room?

The nurses talked often of the other patients. It was the only thing that entertained them. They often had nothing to do, letting the other patients do whatever they wanted, only restraining when they got violent. But as they talked to Peacock about her injured eye, her injured back, they gave her an icepack and had said nothing of the matter, not even if possibly LSD was such a bad thing for the other patients to take after all.

But they began to speak of Painwheel, the little girl who had claws sticking out of her spine, of eyes that carried the mask of skulls, her insanity as she listened to all of the voices in her head, telling her what her hands and her mouth could do, as she often had fights with the other nurses, her claws able to take down the entire society of the wenches.

"I heard Valentine only had her for one reason and one reason only: because she's an experiment. NIMH had passed her over here to see how schizophrenics will function without any meds or treatment whatsoever. But do you see how she gets crazier by the day? She is in no way going to get better in here. Funding for this place is getting cut down little by little each day. Soon, all these homeless little girls are going to need to find another place to stay, because Hellinger Hall is going to go kaput any day now. I especially feel sorry for both Painwheel and Filia, those poor souls are going to dwell in their problems, and they seem to refuse to go to a real mental hospital that's able to help them.


End file.
